AverageGuy wrote:A couple of weeks ago I took Spud for an afternoon run. We were still in sight of the truck when Spud returned to heel with this.

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As I reached Spud he broke his point and dove into the grass in front of him. That is not normal at all, I thought.

"SPUD NO!!!!" This is the photo you get with your phone the moment you see your dog's head emerging from the grass as he turns and heads your way with firm grasp across the back of Skunk releasing it's defense system at full bore. Too late for Spud. It was every man for himself at that point as I made a hasty retreat. Luckily I drive a PU with a camper shell ...

Not Spud's finest outing but solid 4s in Search, Use of Nose, Pointing, Cooperation and Retrieve to Hand.

AG, I'm scratchin' my head on a 4 in Coop. I'd think a truly Cooperative dog would give you a 20 yard head start on that last one...

I grew up in an era when cars were huge and houses were small. Rode across the US in the backs of 4 door Oldsmobiles on family vacations. Grew up in a 1200 square foot, split level ranch house with a 2 car garage. There was a door from the kitchen leading down a set of steep wooden steps into the garage. We had a large backyard which was eventually fenced and had various dogs from an early age.

My older Brother acquired the family's first bird dog, a big for the Breed, pretty orange and white Brittany Spaniel named Fritz, for the princely sum of $25. As with the majority of $25 bird dogs, Fritz had more than a few issues, but my Sister and I were oblivious to them and loved him dearly.

Fritz was gun shy, and he bit a few people (which showed good judgement in my young opinion at the time), and he was surprising good in a dog fight for his size, but he hunted well, found and pointed birds and retrieved to hand if only one person fired one shot. He was keen on kids loving on him so he was part of the family for awhile longer than otherwise might have been the case.

My Childhood was also the era where Thanksgiving traditions included 20+ lb baked turkeys. My Mom would get up in the middle of the night and put our huge bird in the oven so it could bake for half a day and be ready for the early afternoon feast. This particular Thanksgiving was no different and eventually Mom took a picture perfect giant golden roasted butterball from the oven and set it on the kitchen table to cool.

My Mother was not at all prone to shrieking so when her shriek rang out through out tiny house it had special effect and brought us all rushing immediately to her aid in the kitchen. There was Fritz standing on the kitchen table inhaling our bird at what had to be world record time. Apparently Fritz had much to be Thankful for that year, one of which was Lucky to be Alive.

The mystery of who left the door from the kitchen to the garage open was never solved.

GONEHUNTIN' wrote: Mike Flannery was a judge (Owner of River Oaks Corky, high point retriever of all time at this time). Corky was notoriously "sticky" on his birds.

I trialed some in Nebraska back then. River Oaks Corky was all anybody talked about (that is, besides the Cornhuskers)

I never saw Corky run, but the greatest dog I ever watched or threw a bird for was Cannonball Kate, high point female retriever of all time. I was at a National in McCall and Pete was running Kate. It was a blind and he was lining her up on it. Kate was very intense on the line, and when Peter had her nearly lined perfect, she bounced up, licked his face, sat back down on a perfect line to the blind. Guy standing next to me said "That handler made contact with the dog, he should be disqualified". I said to him, that was the greatest display handler awareness I had ever seen and that if that dog and handler were disqualified, the entire National should be concluded. To this day I have never forgotten that. Peter and Kate were two champions.

When I was a kid we took a family trip to AZ. The people we stayed with in AZ were relatives. They had a smaller dog. They set me up on the floor to sleep, the dog happened to be in the bedroom. I don't think I actually got to sleep before turning over into a pile of dog crap. Absolutely disgusting. I suppose I can claim that I've rolled in dog crap before.

The TG turkey feast does bring back some memories. I remember one day when a radiologist neighbor who lived a couple of places down came over to my house and was really pissed at my dog, who he said had just killed (and ate) one of his pet turkeys. So, I gathered up my dogs and we walked over to his pasture and we were kicking the ground a bit and inspecting a bunch of turkey feathers at the scene and we looked over and saw that his dog started retching. As we stood there we watched a pretty much intact turkey being regurgitated on the spot. Of course I got a little grin on my face and pretty much said that obviously the culprit was right there in front of us and it wasn't my dog. His reply was classic: "Well, yours showed him how."

In my late Teens I acquired a B&T Coonhound pup. Named him Zeb, raised and trained him. He turned out to be a beautiful dog and an excellent natural tree dog on squirrels in the daytime and Coons, Cats and an occasional mink at night.

My Best Friend and I were self employed house painters at the time, working/paying our way through college. We both loved to hunt everything and one pretty early fall morning we were at a job site that we were about to wrap up. One of us mentioned it would be a great day to go squirrel hunting. We walked off our job, went home and loaded up Zeb in the backseat of my VW, .410s, shells and game vests, and started driving to Truman Lake in Mo.

We were on the road a couple of hours and were going down an abandoned gravel road which ended at the Public Corp ground surrounding the Lake. Our Hunt would begin in just moments. Excitement was in the air.

I happened to look in my rear view mirror and there was ole Zeb in the classic Kennel Point stance in the backseat. Poor Dog had no idea if we were 2 minutes or 2 hours away from getting out and could hold it no longer. My fault for not airing him sufficiently before I loaded him.

I compounded that mistake with a second one. I slammed on the brakes. Wet dog poo slung forward all over the back of the passenger bucket seat and my Best Buddy suffered collateral damage to the back of his head, arms and shoulders.

The unmistakeable aroma of fresh wet dog poo filled the vehicle.

Doors were flung open and all occupants made swift exits. My Buddy was suffering an immediate and severe bout of Tourettes. Zeb appeared to be the calmest of the group, and having completed his standard pre-hunt warmup, He took note of his surroundings and trotted towards the nearest woods.

For some odd reason my extreme concern for my Buddy's unfortunate state of affairs was expressed in uncontrollable laughter that continues to this day when the tale is retold.

Turkeys and dogs........One of my clients lived in a wealthy neighborhood and had a six month lab pup that was an outlaw. He had pretty much destroyed the neighborhood and there was a virtual bounty on his head. Well, there was a wedding in the neighborhood and it was also the day before Thanksgiving. Clients had a turkey cooling in the garage. His dog went into the garage and started dinner early. Unfortunately, the wife came out, spotted the banding, grabbed the nearest broom and took after him screaming and whacking him with the broom. At this exact time the bride and groom had exited the home across the street, the groom just ushering the bride into the back seat of a limo. The dog came bolting across the street, lady in hot an noisy pursuit, turkey in his mouth, saw the open limo door and bolted in, landing in the brides lap with the greasy turkey. Cost the client a fortune to repair the dress, etc. Two days later I got the dog for training. A year later Judy Aycock offered us a lot of money for him when he won a Qualifying by client wouldn't sell. Oh yah, dog tried to eat a bird in a trial as well but he only tried once.

I had taken a few days off work to make a long Labor Day weekend to drive out and pick up my Pudelpointer pup. About four hours into the trip home, the pup settled in and besides wanting to sleep in my lap, the trip went smooth. I was excited and drove straight through. I got home early Sunday morning on Labor Day weekend. After sleeping most of the way back to Texas the pup was gassed up and ready to go when we got home. The pup immediately proved to be a chewer. Clothes, socks, shoes, furniture.... nothing was safe. I was prepared and had a sack of pig ears. I instructed my wife when she observed him chewing something up in the house to get it from him and give him a pig ear to work on. Everything was going smooth till he decided to chew my wife's housecat's tail. There was an escalating melee and before either had established the upper hand, my wife intervened and separated them. The puppy was intent on getting back after the cat. The cat had been playing with a battery powered cat toy. It was a large plastic cricket. About the size of a roll of quarters. It had batteries and big plastic wings. It was also motion activated to emit a loud cricket sound. Well, the wife got a bit flummoxed in the excitement and threw the cat toy on the floor, which the puppy promptly grabbed. It was about the same time my wife exclaimed "see, he likes it", that the puppy swallowed the battery powered cricket. So now the puppy was bouncing around the house with Cricket sounds emanating from his belly. It's a Sunday and a holiday weekend. We were able to get the vet on the phone and my son and I drove the 40 miles to meet the vet and he opened up his office. After X-rays he explained, "the toy is too big for puppy to pass. If I can't get him to throw it up, I'll need to do surgery. All the while the little puppy is bouncing off the walls and Cricket sounds are filling the room. The vet pumped about a half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide down the pups throat. About the time we started discussing emergency surgery the pup started to wretch and up came the cricket. The vet, my son and me were all laughing and high fiving each other. It was at this time that the pup quickly grabbed the cricket and swallowed it again. Another half bottle of hydrogen peroxide later, with the cricket in hand, the vet told me I was gonna have to watch this one, then he told me how much it just cost me to name the puppy "Cricket".Willie

I had a six month old lab named Scrapper. Got home from the store and told my 9 YO daughter to go dump his food into the container we store it in. I got a 20lb bag cause him and I were going to CO for a couple weeks and didn't need to haul much around. about an hour later ol Scrappy was nowhere to be found. Headed out back to find him and he was laying in the grass gasping for air. I ran up to him he didn't move just panting and his stomach was twice it's normal size. All I could think of was Bloat. Running back into the house I saw a food bag that was laying on the ground and had been ripped open. I looked in the container and it was still empty. the bag had maybe 3 pounds of food left in it. I called Meg and she came out and said she couldn't get the bag open so she left it. Young Scrappy had eaten roughly 17 pounds of dog food in one sitting and was paying the price. I figure he would just yack it up but no. Don't know how he kept it down but he did. 5 hours later I saw him get up and waddle out into the yard. What happened next could be best described as poop silly string shooting about 6 feet out of this little dog for about 10 seconds. Then came the confetti totally dry undigested dog food by the pound popping like goat turds, Every step they just kept popping. He was never really the same after that. I was surprised he even lived.

"The problem with quoting info from the internet is that you can never be sure it is accurate" Abraham Lincoln

a couple of years ago my wife got in a car wreck and was stuck in bed for a few months. (not the funny part) While I was at work she would need help getting some things so I started training Otto as a cut rate service dog. He started just picking up things she dropped and couldn't reach. Well we kept going with his training after my wife recovered. He knows what quite a few things are now and he loves to fetch them. Camping a couple of weeks ago people i mentioned his skills and folks to tried to call my bluff. I handed him my sunglasses and told him to go hide them in the woods. He came back I sent Otto with a sunglasses command. He trotted off and a minute later brought my sunglasses to me. I took three more times to convince everyone he knew what sunglasses are. We are at a point that he has started fetching things on his own. When I get home I sit on the couch take off my boots socks and shirt. I set them neatly on my boots. Then the wife comes home he says his hello and waits. Every time the wife goes into the kitchen where the laundry room is Otto grabs my shirt takes it over to her and starts pushing it into her till she takes it. Then it's the socks. A quick patrol of the house for any laundry laying around then rewards himself with some chow. The other day I was in the shower the bathroom door opened then I heard my wife scream. I jumped out and she was laying on the couch laughing with Otto climbing on her trying to force her to take my dirty underwear that were on the shower floor. Feathers, fur, TV remote, sunglasses, sandals, boots, and laundry the GWP a truly versatile breed.

"The problem with quoting info from the internet is that you can never be sure it is accurate" Abraham Lincoln